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“The Essential” review – Folk & Tumble

February 24, 2016February 24, 2016

“‘The Essential Gretchen Peters’… combines her career-defining creations with the lesser spotted, rare outtakes, demos and B-sides that only an artist both confident and comfortable, yet courageous and acute could do… Her lyrics are often intensely poetic, ferociously potent and unmasking both her power and her glory. Ranging from Shakespearian high drama, driven by dark forces of nature and beyond, to Blake-like innocence and simplicity, to retrospective whimsy, nostalgia and even errant sentimentality – but what would country be without those overarching, aching emotional manacles and ties?”

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You have to watch the quiet ones. Sometimes the loudest truths are served with a whisper. Gretchen Peters, who has written some of country’s most intelligent songs of life’s complications, offers a hushed benediction for a woman emerging from the chilled-over remains of what is truly not enough to flower into full potential.- Holly Gleason / No Depression

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If Peters’ ’96 debut, The Secret of Life, had the answers, her edgier follow-up poses the questions, mostly about how to navigate rough emotional terrain. Full of surprises – “Eddie’s First Wife” has a randy lesbian at its center – Peters brings the pop sensibility of Sheryl Crow to meditations on Amelia Earhart and Picasso’s cat. Easy to see why she’s already captured the Brits. B+-Alanna Nash / Entertainment Weekly